Two-Faced: Learning to Paint Faces

Face painting is like peanut butter – something that children, Americans and American children seem to like. Personally, I’ve always preferred normal butter and proper painting. I’ll admit that I have drawn on a few people, but that was never at their request and they were never children. Still, if I ever build up the confidence to enter the Mr. Laowai China pageant, I will need a talent. So it was that professional face painter Nina Griffee came in to teach me how to transform fair-looking young women into something more suitable for a bouncy castle than a workplace.

First of all, I was assured that hygiene was imperative to being a proper face painter and told to wash my hands. The next task was to try out various dabbing techniques on myself. I tapped, dappled and dragged a sponge across my left arm until we found out I was neither allergic to the paint nor unable to color in an arm. Finally, I had to practice painting with a brush.

The oddest part of this was not painting florid strokes on my forearm but learning that I would have to use my little finger to keep the skin on the paintee’s face taut. This was going to be awkward.

Nina seemed pleased with my progress, or at least pleased enough to let me have a stab at someone’s face. Let me rephrase that: I would be trusted to paint a pattern on someone’s face. Nina asked me which templates I wanted to learn. I picked “pirate” and “tiger,” as “pirate tiger” was not an option. We sat the two interns side by side; Nina and I stood facing them. She asked me to follow her lead as best as I could.

I was initially uncomfortable with the fact that I would have to touch the faces of people who I had made a concerted effort not to touch at all. I started off at arm’s length, but my long-range, pinkieless dabbing looked increasingly hamfisted. “To hell with it,” I thought. Using my (still-reluctant) little finger did add stability and in the end I did manage to make a decent fist of it.

Ultimately, this is what I learned: that not only is it not weird to touch kids on the face if you are painting it, it’s impossible not to; that face painters can rotate sponges in their hands; and that face painting is not an exact science (there are no spray cans or stencils). I also learned that interns aren’t really allowed to say no.

Click here to see the June issue of the Beijinger in full.

Photos: Judy Zhou